Dear Mr. Obama

You'll be surprised to learn that Barack Obama doesn't listen to me. In fact, I'd never get past first base if I applied to work in his administration. Dude, it would probably be easier for me to list the e-mails and blog posts that WOULDN'T embarrass you. I am just saying.

But that certainly doesn't stop me from trying to give him advice.

And, tonight, I have, well, let's not call it advice for Mr. Obama. Let's call it the simple request of a humble, old, hedge witch.

Dear Mr. Obama: please commission a poem for your Inauguration.

It's no secret that I love good poetry. I think it's due to the fact that my sun in Pisces makes me crave ecstasy and experiences that transport me and the fact that my ascendent in Geminii leaves me in love with language. Whatever, the reason, I think that good poetry is the foundation of a good society and I wish that we paid more attention to it in America.

One of the few times that poetry has gotten pride of place has been at the Inauguration of some Democratic presidents. John Kennedy asked fellow New Englander Robert Frost to write a poem for Kennedy's Inauguration. Frost wrote a poem called Dedication for the event:

Dedication

Summoning artists to participate
In the august occasions of the state
Seems something artists ought to celebrate.
Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.
Colonial had been the thing to be
As long as the great issue was to see
What country'd be the one to dominate
By character, by tongue, by native trait,
The new world Christopher Columbus found.
The French, the Spanish, and the Dutch were downed
And counted out. Heroic deeds were done.
Elizabeth the First and England won.
Now came on a new order of the ages
That in the Latin of our founding sages
(Is it not written on the dollar bill
We carry in our purse and pocket still?)
God nodded his approval of as good.
So much those heroes knew and understood,
I mean the great four, Washington,
John Adams, Jefferson, and Madison
So much they saw as consecrated seers
They must have seen ahead what not appears,
They would bring empires down about our ears
And by the example of our Declaration
Make everybody want to be a nation.
And this is no aristocratic joke
At the expense of negligible folk.
We see how seriously the races swarm
In their attempts at sovereignty and form.
They are our wards we think to some extent
For the time being and with their consent,
To teach them how Democracy is meant.
"New order of the ages" did they say?
If it looks none too orderly today,
'Tis a confusion it was ours to start
So in it have to take courageous part.
No one of honest feeling would approve
A ruler who pretended not to love
A turbulence he had the better of.
Everyone knows the glory of the twain
Who gave America the aeroplane
To ride the whirlwind and the hurricane.
Some poor fool has been saying in his heart
Glory is out of date in life and art.
Our venture in revolution and outlawry
Has justified itself in freedom's story
Right down to now in glory upon glory.
Come fresh from an election like the last,
The greatest vote a people ever cast,
So close yet sure to be abided by,
It is no miracle our mood is high.
Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs.
There was the book of profile tales declaring
For the emboldened politicians daring
To break with followers when in the wrong,
A healthy independence of the throng,
A democratic form of right devine
To rule first answerable to high design.
There is a call to life a little sterner,
And braver for the earner, learner, yearner.
Less criticism of the field and court
And more preoccupation with the sport.
It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young amibition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday's the beginning hour.

It was a bad poem, one of Frost's worst. But on the day of the ceremony, the January sun was so bright that Frost couldn't read the page upon which he'd printed out the poem and so he recited from memory a far better poem: The Gift Outright:

The land ws our before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, Still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely; realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.


Jimmy Carter didn't commission a poem. I don't know why; Jimmy could have used some poetry, albeit plain-spoken and spare. Or maybe Southern and lush, like his thick accent. But, sadly, he didn't.

The next Democratic president, Bill Clinton, commissioned Maya Angelou to write a poem for his first Inauguration. I watched, tears streaming down my face, as Angelou read On The Pulse of Morning:

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

2


But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.

3


You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words

4


Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

5


Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song. It says,
Come, rest here by my side.

6


Each of you, a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more. Come,
Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the rock were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sang and sings on.

-7-

There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African, the Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear. They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.

8


They hear the first and last of every Tree
Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside the River.

9

Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you,
Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of
Other seekers -- desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot,
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought,
Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours -- your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.

10


Lift up your eyes upon
This day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.

11

Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands,
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need. Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For a new beginning.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.

12

The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out and upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.

13

Here, on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, and into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope --
Good morning. .

For his second Inauguration, Clinton commissioned Miller Williams, a poet from Clinton's home state of Arkansas, who wrote Of History and Hope:

We have memorized America,
how it was born and who we have been and where.
In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
telling the stories, singing the old songs.
We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.
But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
With waving hands -- oh, rarely in a row --
and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.
Who were many people coming together
cannot become one people falling apart.
Who dreamed for every child an even chance
cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
We know what we have done and what we have said,
and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become --
just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.
All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
on a land we never can visit -- it isn't there yet --
but looking through their eyes, we can see
what our long gift to them may come to be.
If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

Angelou's poem is clearly the best of the three that were written for Inaugurations, although the poem that Frost wound up reciting gives her a run for her money.

But there's something wonderful, IMHO, about a country that can commission poems upon important occasions. I wish that we did it more often, upon the signing of important bills, opening of new national buildings, declaration of important ceremonies. English-speaking peoples used to pay more attention to bards, and for good reason.

So, Mr. Obama never listens to me, but I hope that he'll find some wonderful American poet, some hip hop writer, some poetry slammer, some poet from Chicago or Hawi'i, and commission a poem. It's a lovely modern Democratic Party tradition.

My New Name For A Blog

What Molly Said.

Try to win with some grace, boys. You've beaten back the scary vaginas, whether they were qualified or not, and your penises are safe. For now.

Photo found here.

Stuff

Susie asks some important questions. Several of them would make good journaling exercises, good explorations of the element of Earth. How much of the "stuff" weighing you down was bought with debt? It's as if each new "thing" from eBay or Amazon came with a stone attached to it that you had to agree to carry around with you, weighing you down, turning you into someone else's gimp, a fool who would give up freedom for the "thing" they sold you. How many of the "things" that you own are worth that?

Horned Lord

You Ain't Gunnu Tern Me Over To Teh Haige, Iz Yuh?

Picture found here.

Sunday Trakl Blogging

So the xmas decorations and sale items were up even before Samhein. Forget the old custom of waiting until after Thanksgiving. There's a note of desperation in the window displays of the gift store and the pyramids of xmas comestibles in the aisles of the grocery store. People are unlikely to buy as much useless stuff from China this year. And, O'Reilley's begun his ridiculous defense of xmas, daring anyone to wish him a "Happy Holiday." Every year, they start earlier and, by the time that the holiday comes, I'm overwhelmingly relieved to see it gone.

Which is sad, because there really is a lot of value to a holiday of light and warmth and plenty during the deep, dark, cold of winter. Trakl captured the feeling involved in the good such a holiday can do in his poem, A Winter Evening:

A window with falling snow is sprayed.
Long tolls the vesper bell,
The house is provided well,
The table is for many laid.

Wandering ones, more than a few,
Come to the door on darksome traces.
Golden blooms the tree of graces,
Drawing up the Earth's cool dew.

A wanderer quietly steps within;
Pain has turned the threshold to stone.
There lie, in limpid brightness shown,
Upon the table bread and wine.

This poem reminds me of the Five of Pentacles, especially with its clear references to church. Heidegger saw even more in this poem.

Picture found here.

Here's Joanna Colbert's take on the Five of Pentacles. And, here's Lunea Weatherstone's. For me, the Five of Pents will always be mostly about being blind to the warmth and riches available to you. So maybe Trakl's wanderer has already moved beyond the Five of Pentacles and on to the six of pents, where we are all able to both give of our bounty and receive from our need.

May The Goddess Guard Her. May She Find Her Way To The Summerlands. May Her Friends And Family Know Peace.

Rosella Hightower, a wonderful ballerina, has left us. We are poorer for her absence.

Vehicles For Magic

Someone misguided once described the human body as an ugly bag of mostly water. But, it isn't, you know. It's really an amazing and lovely incorporation of the principle of vulnerability. And, you can't spend much of your life practicing magic without coming to the realization that the human body is a rather well-suited vehicle for concentrating magic into a form in which it can, also, change this world.

de Chardin was, by the end of his life, madly in love with matter. Sometimes, I am drunk with the same wine.

Legs. They're so gentle and so spindly and so -- odd -- that you have to love the creatures attached to them. You have to love any creature so desperately devoted to movement that it would grow legs.

If you haven't seen Naked World, you owe it to yourself to rent it.

Spencer Tunick is the Andy Goldsworty of the human landscape.

Yet, he always shoots clothed.

Vendredi Blog de le Chat

Les Chartreux.

What To Do With Your Obama Signs

I have just been reduced to happy, emotional, relieved tears over and over again this week. That's a funny expression, isn't it: "reduced" to tears. This week, it's felt more like "elevated" to tears. At any rate, it happened again, this morning when I wandered on over to read Ann's amazing blog, The Gods Are Bored.

There's a borough near here that is a historically African American community. During the Civil War, the black soldiers who were killed were not interred in the federal cemeteries ... because the federal cemeteries were white only. So this little borough volunteered to pay for the shipment and burial of any Union Army soldier of color who was unknown or unclaimed by family.

More than 100 African American soldiers wound up in this little local cemetery, including one who earned a Congressional Medal of Honor.

The Spare and I took the Obama/Biden sign and placed it at the head of a parallel row of Civil War-era tombstones, all decked with their American flags.

I said to The Spare, "These men deserve this sign more than you and me."

And she agreed.

. . .

I feel that those soldiers, who knew damned well what they were fighting for, deserved a sign that proves they won.

I did it for them. I did it for my dad's people buried at Andersonville. I did it for freedom of the mind, which every good person should have.

And my daughter, who like all people her age covets souvenirs, gladly parted with a nice one.

I bet when we go back next year on Memorial Day it will still be there.

Damn, that's a good idea. Especially lovely here, just past Samhein, when the veil is still rather thin. Anyone live near the Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit? This war had a whole lot of soldiers .

A Lot Of Good Video Came Out Of This Campaign. This Is My Favorite

Cuz I like dancing, dancers, and people who enjoy dancing. That's all.

Hey, Republicans! I Have A Suggestion For You!

Four years ago, when Bush "won" his second term, there was no fucking end of discussion, both from the so-called liberal media and from Democrats, themselves, (I'm looking at you Harry Dry Powder Reid) about how Democrats needed to "learn how to reach out to 'people of faith'", to "talk about their faith," to "mend fences with 'value voters'", blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The Republicans just had an epic loss, following a campaign where their entire strategy seemed to be to reach out to the batshit insane fundies (I'm looking at you, Palin) and to insult the religious beliefs and geographical origins of as many people as possible (I'm looking at you, lady at the McCain rally who said, "He's, he's, he's an Arab," and I'm especially looking at you, Liddy Dole.) So I'm wondering when I'll start to hear pundits and Republicans, themselves, talking about their need to distance themselves from the snake handlers, the cretins who don't believe in science, the ignoramuses who don't even know that Africa is a continent.

I'm not holding my breath.


Picture found here.

Dear Mr. Yoshida

On November 3, 2004, a pathetic excuse of a man, Adam Yoshida, wrote a little screed. I saved it because I knew, at the time, that the day would come when I would enjoy shoving it back in his face. Here's what Mr. Yoshida had to say upon the occasion of George Bush having eked out a tiny margin of victory due to voter suppression and Diebolding in Ohio:

Four More Years! AKA: Take That, You Sons of Bitches

So, George W. Bush won. And he’s done so by a solid margin. The Democrats’ attempted coup managed to last all of eight hours. Not only is the President the first candidate to win a majority of the vote in a Presidential Election since 1988, but he also won more popular votes than any other candidate in history. The Democrats spent months telling us that high voter turnout would equal a win for them but, as it turns out, when 60% of the electorate showed up at the polls it translated into a Bush lead of nearly four million votes. In short: take that, you sons of bitches.

The Democrats are now talking about how this is a signal that Bush should “bring the country together”. Translated into American, this means “now that you’ve won, you should surrender to us.” The hell with that. We’ve won. Winning means not having to say you’re sorry. Bush already brought a majority of Americans together: they voted for him. He doesn’t need to reach out to them: they need to reach out to him.

If anyone needs to work to “bring the country together” it’s those on the left who have divided it so badly. Those who sought to destroy this great man should get down upon their knees and beg the victors for mercy. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll let a few of them linger on for the simple reason that they amuse us. My life’s goal is to see the Democratic Party virtually obliterated and left as a rump of people like Stephanie Herseth who both mostly agree with us anyways and are easy on the eyes.

That’s the future of the Democratic Party: providing Republicans with a number of cute (but not that bright) comfort women.

Let’s face a hard truth: this was the bitterest Presidential campaign in living memory. The Democrats and their allies staked everything on the defeat of this President. All of the resources they had accumulated over a generation of struggle were thrown into this battle: and they have failed. Despite all of their tricks, despite all of their lies, the people have rejected them. They mean nothing. They are worth nothing. There’s no point in trying to reach out to them because they won’t be reached out to. We’ve got their teeth clutching the sidewalk and out boot above their head. Now’s the time to curb-stomp the bastards.

The first obvious major fight is going to be over the confirmation of the next Chief Justice of the United States and probably a new Associate Justice as well. The reason for saying this should be obvious: William Rehnquist is an ill man and, I think, the obvious candidate to replace him is none other than Clarence Thomas who would be, of course, the first black Chief Justice but who would also, much more importantly, be the most conservative one in living memory. His seat could then be given to another solid conservative and then, once Stevens, Ginsberg, or O’Conner goes, we can get a real conservative majority on the court: and keep it for a decade or more.

It’s worth stepping back to think about the scale of what we have accomplished. We’ve fought back and won against the most destructive attack in the modern history of Presidential campaigns. Despite all of the books, movies, television shows: despite the seeming involvement of all of Hollywood and all of Academia, they lost. They used every trick in the book against us: and they lost. We now control the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate, and a majority of State Governorships. The Republican Party is now, truly, the majority party in the United States.

This is a mandate. Not only for the President to carry on and win the War on Terrorism, but also to make other needed reforms. To begin: the massive landslides for the eleven state Gay Marriage amendments, even the one in Oregon, show that the Federal Marriage Amendment will carry if it proves to be needed. Better still, with these majorities, the President will have a real shot at enacting some form of entitlement reform in the coming years.

This is a decisive moment in American history. There’s no denying this fact. The nation stood at the crossroads yesterday and the people choose to go the right way. They rejected the Democrat Party and the pernicious things that those people stand for.

Michael Moore and his ilk have been rejected by the people. Treason didn’t carry the day. Forgeries and lies failed to produce the results that they wanted.

It was closer than we’d like, of course. Far too close. I still can’t believe that anyone voted for John Kerry. John Kerry was a personification of everything that’s wrong with the Democrat Party today. A traitor in his youth, he proposed policies of economic division at home and which would have brought military defeat abroad. The once-proud Democratic Party of people like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson has been reduced to such a level as to become little better than the party of AIDS, abortion, adultery and appeasement.

But, whatever, we won: to hell with the rest of them. Those who didn’t support Bush can go and perform a certain anatomically impossible act. They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus.

Thank God Almighty.

Dear Mr. Yoshida,

Writing with your dick in your hand is never a good idea. As you now see, it makes you look like an ass. In your case, a juvenile ass with the longing of a frustrated and repressed adolescent for fascism.

And, I've been wanting to tell you for 4 years how un-American your ideas truly are. We don't turn people into "comfort women" in this country. We don't put our fellow Americans in a situation where "their teeth [are] clutching the sidewalk [with your] boot above their head." (Odd, isn't it, that you'd advocate Orwell's nightmare vision of the future: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever.") Nor do we "curb-stomp the bastards. " And, in America, thanks to a heroine named Rosa Parks, we don't send people to the back of the bus.

Your party ran using your nasty desires for division: asserting that some parts of America are less "American" than others, questioning the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with them, throwing the "terrorist" label around for all it was worth, speaking in racist code, and, in the end, falling back on meaningless and pointless school-yard slurs: Whiners! Communist! Socialist! Wealth-Spreader-Arounder!

How'd that work for you?

Here's a brief tally of how your predictions worked out, a mere four years after you declared your thousand year Reich:

Bush didn't win by a solid margin. The last election wasn't the overwhelming victory you fantasized about with your hand down your pants. The last election wasn't about "destroying a great man." Bush was never great and he destroyed himself. More than that, outside of your fevered Nazi imagination, elections aren't about the "men" who run; they're about a free people selecting someone to work for them. You can't say of half of the country: "They mean nothing. They are worth nothing." That's what evil people say; it's not what we say in America about our fellow Americans. You didn't "get a real conservative majority on the court: and keep it for a decade or more." Barack Obama is going to select several Supreme Court justices and many other federal judges, as well. Abortion is here to stay, gay marriage is here to stay, "entitlement reform" didn't happen, and, as for the Democrats being the "party of adultery," well, your party ran an admitted adulterer this time around, while Republicans from Newt Gingrich, to David Vitter, to Larry Craig, to, well, you get the idea.

So on the occasion of a truly historic election, one in which that black man (whose middle name is Hussein) won a real mandate, I'd like to suggest that you spend a few years emptying bed pans at Walter Reed. A little humility would do you good. Help you to grow up. Give you a chance to get over yourself. And the next time that you think that "your team" has "won" (and they will, no party in America has a permanent hold on power) you might like to remember a bit of Mr. Shelley's poetry:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Obama Or McCain?

Judgement, a major arcana card. This is an important election. This card, from the Robin Wood deck, shows a phoenix and depicts resurrection, a new beginning, something original and fresh coming out of the ashes of the old. It's often seen as a card that shows up when one has dealt with an old shame and is ready to move on. Sounds like America, on so many levels.

I think it's a good sign for Barack Obama (a Leo and, thus, a child of fire).

(Although there is a city in Arizona . . . .) Nah.

The World Is Made Of Stories, Not Of Atoms

Last night in Manassas, Obama told a great story about an old woman in a ceremonial hat doing a chant that worked magic I love stories and I believe Muriel Rukeyser they're what make our world.

There's a story that goes with this picture, too. My friend TJ sent it to me. She and her friend Holly were at an Obama rally in Raleigh and a woman in the crowd got sick. The picture shows Obama tossing his bottle of water to the woman's friends so that they could splash a bit on her face and give her a drink. He's like a long, cool drink of water on a hot day.

America's been thirsty for eight long years.

Stay In Line

Our Mothers went through a lot so that you could vote.



Don't get out of line. Get in line early and don't leave without voting.

Go Vote Tomorrow, Vote As If You Meant It

/hat tip: David Derbes in comments at Eschaton.

Obama's Coming

Hey Nonny Nonny!



Go take a bath. With friends. Wash off the last 8 years.

Yes, I Screwed Up (Almost) First Of The Month Bazooms Blogging

Ladies! Listen up! Detecting breast cancer early is the key to surviving it! Breast Self Exams (BSEs) can help you to detect breast cancer in its earlier stages. So, on the first of every month, give yourself a breast self-exam. It's easy to do. Here's how. If you prefer to do your BSE at a particular time in your cycle, calendar it now. But, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

And, once a year, get yourself a mammogram. Mammograms cost between $150 and $300. If you have to take a temp job one weekend a year, if you have to sell something on e-Bay, if you have to go cash in all the change in various jars all over the house, if you have to work the holiday season wrapping gifts at Macy's, for the love of the Goddess, please go get a mammogram once a year.

Or: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pays all or some of the cost of breast cancer screening services through its National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This program provides mammograms and breast exams by a health professional to low-income, underinsured, and underserved women in all 50 states, six U.S. territories, the District of Columbia, and 14 American Indian/Alaska Native organizations. For more information, contact your state health department or call the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

Send me an email after you get your mammogram and I will do an annual free tarot reading for you. Just, please, examine your own breasts once a month and get your sweet, round ass to a mammogram once a year.

Merci!

Photo found here.

Because

On Calling Sarah Palin A Bitch

Pretty Much:

(Seven Posts in Seven Days - Day 1)

I am surprised that some of you are up in arms about my calling Sarah Palin a bitch, or John McCain an ass or even George Bush a jackass. I read your comments about how I should be more respectable and not call Sarah Palin a bitch. Some of you are actually praying for me because I called John McCain an ass. In particular I am struck by the comments that suggest the problem with our country is that we can’t have an intelligent conversation to solve our problems without resorting to name calling like when I called George Bush a jackass.

Well this old broad is hurt. Clearly I didn’t start this blog to call Sarah Palin a bitch…or John McCain an ass… or even George Bush a jackass. I am so sorry if I have offended any of you. What was I thinking when I called Sarah Palin a bitch?

New rules:

I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling me a terrorist: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

I will stop calling John McCain an ass when he stops calling Barack Obama a socialist at every dog and pony show on the Straight Talk Express tour.

I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer. And I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part of the country where I do live. And I will definitely stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch.

I’m old enough to remember the Republican party of Barry Goldwater - when the party stood for fiscal responsibility, small government and personal freedoms. I remember when I could talk with friends about politics and just agree to disagree. And then religious nut cases decided that if you didn’t agree with them you were immoral. So they went and elected George Bush President so he could take the Republican Party from being a party full of respectable people to a party filled with asses, jackasses and yes - bitches like Sarah Palin.

I am tired of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that feminism is a dirty word. How hard did he fight to gain the right to vote? Or own property in his own name? Or get equal pay for equal work?

And I am tired of Sean Hannity suggesting I am un-American because I don’t think that war is the answer to everything. How many bullets has he taken defending his country in battle?

And I am tired that Sarah Palin can decide what she wants to do with her body but other women can’t make that decision for themselves.

NEW, New Rules:

If you are not for me, you are against me. I’ll get over it. Now kindly return the favor.

Oh…and one last thing. Elisabeth Hasselbeck is still a moron. There is just no way around that, Folks.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. I am doing fine. Thanks for asking. I mean it

It may be that this whole election is really about the fact that the economy tanked a few weeks before election day and that nothing else matters. But I'd like to think that this election has shown that you can no longer win by calling other Americans names, impugning their patriotism, lying about (Goddess guard us) their religion, or digging up the odd weird relative or former vague association. If true, that would be a really good thing, IMHO.

Update: Peter Beinart has some interesting thoughts on this topic.

Sunday Trakl Blogging

De Profundis

It is a stubble field, where a black rain is falling.
It is a brown tree, that stands alone.
It is a hissing wind, that encircles empty houses.
How melancholy the evening is.
A while later,
The soft orphan garners the sparse ears of corn.
Her eyes graze, round and golden, in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.
On the way home
The shepherd found the sweet body
Decayed in a bush of thorns.
I am a shadow far from darkening villages.
I drank the silence of God
Out of the stream in the trees.
Cold metal walks on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
It is a light that goes out in my mouth.
At night, I found myself on a pasture,
Covered with rubbish and the dust of stars.
In a hazel thicket
Angels of crystal rang out once more.

~Translated by James Wright and Robert Bly

Friday Cat Blogging

Whot U Mean, "'We' Go 2 Vet"? U Can Haz Squirrel In Ur Pocket?

Because

Blessed Samhein

Tonight is -- perfect. Windy and cold and only the tiniest cold sliver of a moon-white moon in the indigo-chakra-dark Autumn sky. You can feel ideas and change and odd bits of oddness blowing around, unseen, in the air and, every now and then, an acorn hits you hard on the head or an oak leaf catches itself in your hair or the unknowable touches the buckle of your spine.

My patroness is the Goddess Hecate, goddess of the crossroads on cold, windy nights when things go suddenly liminal and change is already flowing across the boundary between what couldn't be and what might become. She comes with her several-headed dogs, who look in all directions and She shows up, unafraid, I like to think, but afraid or unafraid, She shows up, and She midwifes both what's being born and what's dying. She stands there, where you have to choose, or where you have to admit that the choice has been made for you, and where two roads diverge in the wood and you, you'll take either the smooth one or the one less traveled by -- and that will make all the difference.

And so, tonight, when the veil's so thin it seems like a lacy membrane, when anyone can walk outside and sense the holes between HERE and WHERE HERE'S HEADED, when sugar skulls are for sale in Mexican markets and jack-o-lanterns light the way of the beloved dead all over America, I am almost drunk with my love of liminal spaces: childbirth, death, the Moon, which Hecate Soteria presided over as a land where souls went after death, elections, sea changes, emerging leitmotifs, the turning point on the Wheel of the Year where it stops being THIS YEAR and, in a moment, becomes NEXT YEAR.

Thirty-five years ago today, my hormones went FLUSH, I was overcome with tears, and 48 hours later, I gave birth to my wonderful Son. The road branched. And all unaware, with nothing but my catholic school background and grounding in the BVM and the saints, I felt Her then, my patroness, Goddess of childbirth (that liminal time when women turn their bodies into a portal for Life to come into the world and do so only by risking death, which may have been one of my very first experiences of using my body in order to do magic) wrapping me in Her cape and setting my feet upon the loveliest and steepest branch of the crossroads. And for many years, that was all that I knew: that I'd gotten the tiniest, vaguest glimpse of something and that, if I could ever track it down, I'd follow it all my life.

Today, both Son and DiL had major professional victories. Today, G/Son is preparing to trick-or-treat for the first time outside his Nonna's back porch. Tonight, I am preparing my home for the witches who will fly in tomorrow, sailing their broomsticks on the wild Autumn wind, to dance and sup and burn things and do magic here in my odd little cottage in the oak grove. Thirty-five years ago, I had no idea. And that's what makes it fun.

May your beloved dead visit you in love and may the coming year beckon warmly to you across the Swiss-cheese veil. Once more, once more, once more, into the breech.

Picture found here.

A Poem For Samhein

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

Through The Veil

Odd, how the veils are getting so thin just as America finds itself at the genus locii of my patroness: the crossroads where Hecate stands with her several-headed dogs.

I have too much to do between now and ground zero of the year when my HP sits us down to a dumb supper and calls our ancestors to sup with us.

Who has passed this year who mattered to you?

Art found here.

You Go Vote Or I Will Turn You Into A Newt

Boulder, Colorado.
Shit. Who took my box of kleenex?

Sexism

As NTodd points out in comments to one of my posts from yesterday, I overgeneralized. The Hillary Hatred didn't really extend to every white, male, 30-something blogger. Guilty, as charged.

There was, however, when you look back at it, a few months out, an absolutely AMAZING amount of hatred -- all out of proportion to reality -- directed towards "that woman" (and anyone foolish enough to speak up and support her or even suggest that perhaps the sexism was not too becoming for supposed liberals) and regular and v shrill demands, starting quite early, that she STEP DOWN RIGHT NOW in favor of the "more deserving" man. You couldn't go 15 minutes on some blogs without hearing that, by insisting that everyone get to vote in a primary and that every state mattered, Hillary Clinton was "destroying" not only Obama's only chance to beat McCain, but also the entire future of the Democratic Party. And all "for her own ego."

I said at the time, and I believe today, that any guy who'd done exactly what Hillary did would be celebrated for "having heart," being "a real fighter," having "what it took" to "stay in it to the end," for "never giving up, even in the final quarter," for "staying focused through the ninth inning, " [insert your sports metaphor here]. He'd also be the VP nominee for the Democratic Party. Cf., e.g., John Edwards.

Now, with 20/20 hindsight, it's pretty clear that, by forcing Obama to develop a ground game in all 50 states, by creating a situation where voters were seeing Obama ads months and months before McCain (who was doing his victory lap around the other Republican primary candidates and ignoring many states since they "no longer mattered,") Clinton did not only Obama, but also the entire party a favor. When you look at it, you can see it as a logical outcome of Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy. If Democrats show up in every state, spend money in every state, contest every state, not only can they win states that they never dreamed before that they could win, they can exhaust the Republicans by making them spend money, time, and energy defending what should have been "safe" states, even if, in the end, those states stay red.

So was there a lot of sexism behind the out-of-proportion hatred? Yes. Yes, there was. There certainly was. And many of the proponents believe to this day that they, of course, aren't sexist, at all. Some of their best friends are women and they would, of course, support the "right woman" -- if she ever came along. And paid her dues. And was "more qualified" than the man.

It's odd how many unintended good things often result from doing the right thing. Hillary Clinton was right to fight the primary out to the very end, even if it made that "more deserving" man fight harder for his job than he "should" have had to if only she'd been "gracious" and given up, as girls are taught to do. It was the right thing for her, for her supporters, for women, for Democrats. And it was the right thing for Obama.

Since the primaries ended, Hillary's also done the right thing. She gave a gracious and inspiring concession speech. She's supported Obama in state after state and and she's raising money for other Dems. And I've yet to hear nearly as much, "Gee, thanks, Hillary," as I heard "That Eviiiilllll Woman." But I have a long memory.

Jobs, Baby, Jobs

Her voice is almost gone. She's exhausted. And she's boosting the guy who beat her. Her fifty-state fight is what boosted him over the edge, making him run ads months ago in states he never dreamed that he'd win, months before McCain even thought of those states. And she, and her supporters, got raked over the fucking coals on every thirty-something male's liberal blog in left blogistan.

You guys SO owe us. I have a long memory.

I am just saying.

Wicca 202

Gather a group of witches and ask them where our religion is going and, within minutes, you'll hear the longing for material -- books, blogs, YouTubes, DVDs -- that goes beyond what's come to be called "Wicca 101." Not too many cradle Pagans among us -- yet -- and, so, many of us "came to Wicca" via some form of Wicca 101: A book by Llewellyn. A course at the local Unitarian church. A feminist studies course that sent us to a feminist bookstore where we saw a three-by-five card on the bulletin board that led us to an occult bookstore where we overheard a conversation and screwed our courage to the sticking point in order to introduce ourselves . . . .

It's not that there's a lack of serious literature. Christ writes it, Eisler writes it, Starhawk writes it, Sylvan tries to write it; hell, a bunch of the blogs linked right here write it. But there is a lack of information/direction/description of where you go once you've "got" the basics. (Not that any of us every really "gets" the basics. I maintain that, if you find a good teacher, you could take Reclaiming's Elements of Magic class (the true Wicca 101) over and over for a lifetime. But ,you know what I mean.) Growing up Catholic -- with several centuries of writing about how to meditate, how to pray, how to approach liturgy, how to integrate liturgy into a personal practice, how to spend each hour in worship, how to process mystical experience, how to grow within a spiritual tradition -- being an avid reader, and, named, as I am, for a Doctor of the Church, I've long felt this lack quite deeply.

T. Thorn Coyle has started a series of podcasts, available for free on iTunes, that help to address this gap. I'd link, but iTunes makes that fucking difficult, esp. if you don't want to reveal your name. If you go to iTunes, go to podcasts, and search under Thorn Coyle, you'll find them easily. She's basing the discussions around each of the elements and the discussions, so far, have been quite good. Her discussion of Air, with a ceremonial magician, was particularly good, IMHO. It's not an introduction to Pagan practice, but even someone w only a good basic understanding should get something out of it. She also discusses water and dream work with Anne Hill in an understandable and yet advanced way that would profit any witch no matter how experienced. I woke up this morning going, hmmmm. Dreams are so much richer when you go to sleep expecting them to be rich.

I'd love to see this same material up on YouTube, even if accompanied by no more than pictures of Thorn and her interviewee or by Powerpoint slides. Not everyone goes to iTunes for this sort of search.

Art, by Christopher Vacher, found here

I Want To Be An Old Woman

Lunea's right: this completely rocks. Get a mammogram and welcome your ancestresses on Samhein. In my circle, one of the things we do on Samhein is to call our female line back as far as we know it. How many old women are there in your line?

Sunday Trakl Blogging

In Autumn

Sunflowers shine near the fence,

Silently sick people sit in the sunshine.

Women strive singing in the acre,

Into which monastery bells chime.

Birds tell you a far away tale

Into which monastery bells chime.

From the courtyard the violin sounds softly.

Today they press the brown wine.

Now man appears glad and dulcet.

Today they press the brown wine.

The chambers of the dead are open wide

And beautifully painted with sunshine.

Picture found here.

Random Acts Of Kindness

Angela has a good idea:

Here’s the deal:

1) You have to have a blog to participate in this.

2) The first three people who sign up in the comments will receive some sort of kindness from me.

3) Those three people then blog about it at their place and offer the same to the first three people who sign up, who blog about it at their place, and offer kindnesses to the next three, &c., &c., &c., until the Kindness Revolution is unstoppable due to Newton’s Second Law, where f=ma.

4) The act of kindness can be whatever you like; it can be a little gift you mail to someone, or it can be something more intangible; whatever fits your circumstances, budget, or personality. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, certainly; just something to put a smile on a stranger’s face.

5) Link back to this post in your

My act of kindness: a one card tarot reading for the first three people to post.


Picture found here.

And By The Cold, Grey Novembers Of Life, We Transit From Autumnals, Etc.

Wind and rain announcing Autumn! A cat curled up on my lap. Fuzzy socks on my feet and ankles. Knitted mittens for G/Son, almost finished. Mittens for new great-nephew, planned from the scraps. Tea. Opera pouring from the iPod. Samhein with my circle of amazing women, within sight; the table already set, the firepit stacked with beech wood, the Innana candle standing ready.

May it be so for you.

PS: I stole this picture off the internets tubes, but I don't remember where. Whoever knit them, they are lovely!

Nov. 4, 2008. Don't Fuck This Up, America. Really. I Mean It.

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

~ Sheenagh Pugh


Picture found here.

What I Know For Sure

The purpose of ritual is to change the mind of the human being. It's a sacred drama in which you are the audience as well as the participant, and the purpose of it is to activate parts of the mind that are not activated by everyday activity. We are talking about the parts of the mind that produce psychokinetic, telekinetic power, whatever you want to call it -- the connection between the eternal power and yourself. As for why ritual, I think that human beings have a need for art and [that] art is ritual [and ritual is art]. . . . It has seemed to me that much of the modern Craft and the Neo-Pagan movement lacks real music and real dance, in comparison to indigeneous Pagan religious movements. . . . I attribute this [lack of authentic experience] to our loss of skill in the use of music, rhythm, dance, and psychogenetic drugs. In the Irish tradition, music was essential to the success of the rites. . . . Another thing that was essential to the rites in ancient times was ritual drunkenness and sex. And I find this also lacking. We have to create those ecstatic states again. We have to offer people an energy source and a theological alternative, and we can only do this by offering real experience. We have to introduce real sacraments. . . . Much of Neo-Paganism lacks the same content [that] I've described before. The raising of power is an accidental occurrence among most of us at the present time. I find that difficult for my own self-esteem. It makes it difficult to work with people. I don't like going through empty ritual with anybody, especially my closest friends. [A]nyone who calls themselves a Witch should have the capability to deal with different ecstatic states.

Sharon Devlin, as quoted in~Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

Art found here.

This Is Going To Turn Into A Landslide

GoBama

Go Thou And Do Likewise

V creative friend K waited half an hour today to absentee vote in NoVa.

It's starting to look as if it will be a L-A-N-D-S-L-I-D-E.

Go vote.

Soul Work

Just a few days until Samhein.

For me, this time of year is about introspection. Samhein is the beginning of a new year for witches, and the days leading up to Samhein are a time to pause and consider what I've accomplished over the past year and what I failed to accomplish. And the "why" behind the things that I wanted to accomplish and, yet, didn't accomplish is an important question for me.

It seems to me that when I want to do something but "just can't" quite "get around to it," a Shadow is often involved. (Assuming, of course that I really do want to achieve that goal and didn't just adopt it because I thought that I "should" or because others wanted it for me.) And my Shadows will, if approached gently, respectfully, in a light trance, talk to me. Those are important conversations for me, not easy or fun, but important to the process of becoming who I want to become, to the process of stripping off the layers and revealing/becoming my Better Self. I sometimes ask a Shadow for its name, ask if we can do a joint Tarot reading, ask what I can do to help the Shadow feel safe enough to let me make desired changes.

The Shadow that I worked with this weekend showed me her picture: the Two of Pentacles. How do you read that card?


Art found here.

Duirweigh

Stickley

The Loss Of Everyday Divinity

Prayer for Peace

Let's gather round the
lake now
hold hands
and sing from
our luminous throats
our proud bellies
Let's charge up the
water molecules
with our Love
and send out a
current of healing
to the sleepy houses
all filled with TV static and
the loss of
everyday
divinity.

Let's.

~Shae Savoy

Photo found here.

If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution

Dancing as Liberation

There are countries where it is a punishable crime to dance.

Women must cover their heads,
never riase their voice in song and
never ever display such immoral conduct s dancing.

Those who forbid the dance forbid life.

If they tied me in ropes
Held a gun to my head
And forbid me to dance
I would dance in my head.

If I woke up tomorrow
Without limbs that would move
I would dance in my soul.

If dance were taken from me
I would snatch it back.
I wold dance with my eyes.
I would dance with my breathing.
I would dance completely still.
I would dance with the atoms moving inside me.

I would dance in the mingling of voices around me
Layering transcendence swooping into each other.
I would dance n the red-blushed sky that caresses the tree line.
I would dance on the call of the geese
that cut through the sky above me,
my winged partners in the dance.

If dance was taken from me
I would snatch it back.

I would dance passion.
I would dance pain.
I would dance magick.
I would dance at my labor and dance at my rest.
I would dance my power.
I would dance my palpable joy of existence.

n some countries it is illegal to dance.
It is illegal to display such immoral conduct.

Dancing is an act of liberation.
It is for those who must dance in st

Phtot found here.

Being The River's Fingers

The River asked me
to be her fingers
her voice
her song.
I don't remember
saying "yes"
that day I offered
to help clean up,
but here I am dancing her
into wholeness and beauty.
Segments of my life
on seemingly unrelated
streams and branches
weave together
in a flowing
undulating tapestry as
the watershed
unveils herself
to me through me in me.

Burning desire
to know about her-story,
who drank from her waters
before
in birchbark,
in cabins, in mills,
in factories, in suburbs:

How can I feel her sense
of transformation
of the slime and dumps,
the stench
and cement banks
of the hopeless reputation
into greenbelts, wetlands,
joy-filled parks,
wild reserves?

When did I say
I would spend my days
connecting the places
opening my eyes
and their eyes
to her web of grace?
To come to know her
intimately
over hundreds
of square miles
to feel her voice
whisper or cry,
"Have you noticed this?
Show them this!
my colors, my offerings
my stories of Her-Story."

~Carly Dyer

Picture found here.

Seed Slavery. Doan Want.

We have a covenant w/ creation to carry on our responsibility, as those who have two legs, in relationship to our relatives that have fins, wing, hooves, and roots. And so we have this food. Manoomin, which means "the most wonderous seed." This food is a central part of our culture as Anishinaabeg people. We have cared for those rice beds, for our lakes and rivers for as long as we have been Anishinaabeg.

When the University of Minnesota cracked the DNA sequence for Wild Rice, that set us up for genetic engineering and genetic contamination. One of our chiefs said, "Who gave them permission?" And that is the ethical question, isn't it? Who gave anybody rights to change the DNA sequence of life forms?

I didn't understand what seed slavery was until I met up with Monsanto. And then I understood why we had to ensure that they did not patent our rice and they didn't own it. And so, we as indigenous people have formed this indigenous seed sovereignty coalition; with us are the taro farmers of Hawaii, who are saying taro is our relative and you can not patent it. Our relatives in New Mexico look at protecting the indigenous corn varieties as their relatives. These are essential parts of who we are.

Our traditional foods, those really old indigenous varieties, are much higher in antioxidants, fiber, amino acids than anything you can buy at the store. Those foods are medicine. those old biologically diverse seed stocks have the ability to adapt and will make it through climate destabilization. If we want to feed our people, we have to go back to our original heritage varieties, those original relatives that have roots.

~Winona LaDuke, Bioneers 2007 Conference, October 19-21, reprinted in the We'Moon 09 Calendar

When I Am Clear

when I am clear
with myself
clear
to the sold cavern
at my center
the world turns
luminous truly
in the truth telling
orbs and edifice
of sense
I become a bell
my body becomes
a bell the wind rings

~Marna 2005, reprinted in he We'Moon 09 Calendar

The Most Fun I've Ever Had

One of the loveliest books I ever read -- and should re-read -- is Pillar of the Sky by Cecelia Holland, which tells the story of the construction of Stonehenge. There's an amazing line in the story, when one of the builders looks at the partially-constructed monument and, explaining succinctly its purpose, says, "I am with my father's father's fathers and with my son's son's sons." It resonated with me the moment that I read it and I've never forgotten it. And there are moments in my life when it's the only verbal expression that I know for a deep and important experience that I'm having.

I got to spend time w G/Son last night and, having spent the night at his house, again this morning. I suppose that it's inherent in the business of being a grandparent, and it's even stronger for the fact that this little one carries such a clear genetic imprint of my pipple from out of the Arctic North, with ears that remind me of the Elvish blood from his grandfather's fey side of the family. But I cannot hold this child without being transported to that feeling: I am with my father's father's fathers. (And my blonde, fair-skinned mother's blonde mother's mothers.) And I am, literally, with my son's son's sons.

Son and DiL got home last night as the debates were starting and they allowed G/Son to stay up to see "Pweswident Obama." It's how we do things in my family; the only nights I can ever remember being allowed to stay up late were presidential conventions and debates, when I'd sit with my dad and get treated as if I were a thinking person and as if that were really OK. And I was watching McCain lose to Obama and realizing: I was wrong earlier this year. I figured that if, and it was an if, if Obama could win in the racist States of America, it would be by a v narrow margin. I was wrong. It looks as if not only is America poised to elect an African American president, but she's prepared to do it by a landslide. She takes her time, but every now and then, America makes you proud. Dr. King said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He was right. I looked at my two-year old G/Son and realized that when Obama ends his second term, G/Son will be ten years old. The only president he will have ever known will have been an African American president. That will be the norm for him. The first president that I really remember was Kennedy, who died when I was seven. Johnson assumed office and was president until I was eight. G/Son's reference will be an America where the president is African American.

G/Son loves my iPhone. Ever since he was little, I've kept it loaded with YouTubes that he likes in order to, for example, keep him amused when the brunch order takes a while to come out of the kitchen or when, as this morning, his 'rents are running around getting things ready and packing things up. Over time, what's on my iPhone has morphed from mostly Elmo to mostly The Jungle Book to Dinosaurs. Last night, G/Son told me, "Nonna, I like Batman and Spiderman." When he was watching the Dinosaurs on my iPhone he said, "Nonna, can there be Batman on your iPhone?" Of course, there could be. G/Son is at that stage where he can watch the same three minute animation over and over and tell you the story each time. "Look. Two bad guys. They set a fire. That's bad; fires can hurt Bambi. Here comes Batman in his mobile car. He throws the boomerang at the bad guys. That's one of his special tools. Batman catches the bad guys and my mommy [the prosecutor] makes them go to jail. There's Batman standing on the roof." And then we do it again. Only, G/Son wants to manipulate the iPhone himself. "No. Me do it." And, he can. He can manipulate the virtual objects on the screen ("That's the screen. Don't touch it when it's playing; that makes it stop.") Again, I sit there, a child of the fifties, and realize, "I am with my son's son's sons."

It's going to be so much fun.

Light posting over the next few days and that only if blogger's "future posting" feature really works. Some v generous souls have offered me their cabin for the weekend and it's that time just before Samhein when, witch that I am, I need time alone in nature for introspection. Back on Tuesday.

McCain/Palin: Doan Want

Also, Japanese Temple Pines

I think that I am in love.

Western Autumn Sun Hitting My Japanese Maple

Part of my mad plan, which is mine, is to more or less turn my backyard into a small woodland around a little patio w a fountain and large Stone and undetermined Air Element and a fire pit. Today, Landscape Guy showed up at 7:00 am w Japanese Temple Pines and Japanese Maple Trees and American Wisteria, Amethest to begin that transformation. Around 4:45 pm, the Autumn Setting Sun hit the red leaves of one of the new Japanese Maples.

I believe that my ancient oak trees are v happy.

Do You Think This Culture Will Undergo A Voluntary Transformation To A Sustainable Way Of Living?

There is only one community, and it lives and dies as a unit. Any harm done to the natural world diminishes the human world, because the human world depends on the natural world not only for its physical supplies but for its psychic development and fulfillment. This is most important, because people talk about the need to destroy the natural world in order to advance the human world. Well, anything that diminishes the wonder and fulfillment we receive from the natural world spoils the human enterprise. We may get a pile of possessions, but it won't mean much if we can't go to the mountains or the seacoast, or enjoy the songs of birds or the sights and scents of flowers. What does it do to our children when they cannot enjoy such things?

The other dimension to this is that we have to somehow get beyond Western Civilization, which must be profoundly altered because it is so destructive in its present state. This alteration is so absolute and so deep in its implications that a person has to wonder about the continuity. In other words, Western Civilization itself is causing our difficulties, which makes this type of change hard to really comprehend. Transformations of this magnitude are generally associated with some type of religious change.

Thomas Berry, interviewed by Derrick Jensen in How Shall I Live My Life?

The Garden Just Before Samhein

Helibore is usually the v first thing to bloom and pineapple sage is usually the v last thing to bloom.

I don't grow many red flowers, but I can't help myself when it comes to pineapple sage.

Sunday Trakl Blogging

The Rats

In the farmyard the white moon of autumn shines.
Fantastic shadows fall from the eaves of the roof.
A silence is living in the empty windows;
Now from it the rats emerge softly
And skitter here and there, squeaking,
And a grey malodorous mist from the latrine
Follows behind them, sniffling:
Through the mist the ghostly moonlight quivers.
And the rats squeak eagerly as if insane
And go out to fill houses and barns
Which are filled full of fruit and grain.
Icy winds quarrel in the darkness.


~Translated by Robert Bly and James Wright

Picture found here.